you-lano, me-lano, we-lano

So, I woke up super early Friday morning (read: 5am), got on one of the first metros, got on a train to the airport, took off, landed, all before 10am. And then all of a sudden it hit me: I was in ITALY. Home of gelato, pizza, pasta, gnocchi, and all other things delicious. And that feeling never quite went away, as this weekend was one of the best I've had maybe in my whole life.
Friday, after I dropped my bag off at the hotel, I took a short day trip up to Bergamo. The train was easy, I got by with no Italian, and I got a tourist map and info brochure in English. Because Milan is a notably industrial city in Italy, perhaps THE industrial city in Italy, I wanted to go somewhere out of the city to get a better taste. Bergamo didn't disappoint. It was a beautiful city with TONS of history, noteable for it's "Old City" on the top of the hill - you had to take a cable car to get to it. The city is walled in with walls from the Middle Ages. This height allows you to get amazing views of the Italian country side and the walls mean you won't ever get truly lost. It was also, I realized, one of the first times I'd been out of a real city since I'd been abroad. I think it was something about being on a hill that made the air seem cleaner or better smelling or something. It was very nice to have a day to myself. (Please, nobody ever look to see how many times I use positive adjectives in this blog. It would be horrendous and embarrassing.)
A great day, made even greater by the fact that Lindsay and Gillian from Tufts and their friend Jacob (on their Geneva program) got there that night! Too tired to go experience nightlife, we went to sleep.
The next day, I can very proudly say, Linds, Gillian and I ate our way through all of Milan. Pizza, bruschetta, pasta, pesto, gelato, brioches, nutella, you name it, we ate it. We also saw the castle, the world's oldest shopping mall, the Basilica, and the Duomo, stopping frequently for snacks and coffee. It was a great, relaxed day with a little shopping, no serious agenda, and the ability to stop and say "hey, let's go in here" without any trouble. There were plenty of charismatic people along the way, especially when we went to la banque, a Milan dischotecha, but was such an incredibly successful day that I didn't even mind.
Sunday was cut short by travelling, boo, but I can already tell that I'm going to want to go back to Italy in my life time. Probably more than once. But now I'm back to real life, which is, I suppose, not so bad when you're living in Paris.
Yes, yes, the promise of pictures remains. But I have my first Sorbonne paper due Tuesday.